The Case for Governance Reform

What’s the purpose of this symposium?

The overall purpose of this online symposium is to shine a bright light onto the very real need for more effective measures to ensure better governance in the financial services sector. Everything related to this objective is in scope; including the case for radical Corporate Governance Reform. 

Our event is being run as part of a major international project about creating an over-arching framework for finance reform. At the heart of that framework for finance reform are the 12 Finance Development Goals that we are developing; one of which is dedicated to Governance. Thereby, this symposium represents one more step forward in our collective efforts to galvanise support for positive, progressive and purposeful finance reform, for the benefit of all.

We already know that the financial services sector as a whole has a significant reputation problem – the key takeaway from the Edelman Trust Barometer is:

“…at 57 percent trust among the general population, financial services remain the least-trusted sector measured by the Trust Barometer.”

…and that’s obviously a major issue for a sector that has to be trusted to function successfully.

It is clear that there is far too much adverse publicity about the financial services sector; and that it is having a long-lasting and highly damaging effect on the reputational integrity of the sector. 

This is a serious and systemic issue that needs to be resolved.

Our symposium creates a first-class opportunity for a wide range of stakeholders to share their thoughts around what needs to be done; how best to do it and who should take responsibility for fixing what seems to be broken; or at least very badly damaged. 

You can expect to be ‘amongst’ progressively minded and collaboratively minded people.

On the basis that “progress begins with realism” we will be facilitating the kind of candid yet constructive discussions that are needed to help move matters forward.

We are expecting this to be a particularly lively symposium because we will be creating a forum for people to “say it as they see it” and there is no doubt that many people are very disappointed with and very frustrated by the poor governance that prevails in financial services. 

We don’t think any one person or organisation has all the answers; and we also think that all answers are worth listening to, so if you’ve got a point of view that you’d like to share, this is definitely an event for you.